Communicating wirelessly requires that a user device maintains a connection to a wireless network that wirelessly links the user device to a base station in the wireless network. Maintaining quality of a wireless link to the base station is desirable from multiple perspectives, including that of the user device (e.g., effectiveness of communications), as well as that of that of the base station (e.g., efficient use of wireless network resources available to the base station).
The quality of the wireless link between the user device and the base station encompasses at least one quality of signals associated with downlink communications (e.g., communications received by the user device from the base station) as well as at least one quality of signals associated with uplink communications (e.g., communications transmitted from the user device to the base station). An example of a signal quality is signal strength, one measure of which is a received signal strength indicator (RSSI). For example, as part of communicating with the base station, the user device may receive strong downlink signals (e.g., downlink signals with strong RSSIs) while the base station concurrently receives weak uplink signals (e.g., uplink signals with weak RSSIs). In this example, even though the downlink signals are strong, the weak uplink signals compromise the wireless link as a whole. The user device may be able to receive data from the base station, but the base station may not be able to receive data from the user device. In an instance where the base station is not able to receive the data from the user device, resources of the wireless network, as allocated to communications between the base station and the user device, may go unused. As such, the use of resources available to the base station is inefficient and the user device is ineffective in transmitting data across the wireless network.
Maintaining a connection to the wireless network (via the user device wirelessly linking to the base station) presents challenges in certain instances, such as when the user device changes its physical location or when there is an increase in other user devices proximate to the base station that increases interference. In these and other instances, it may be beneficial for a handover to occur, during which the user device wirelessly links to a neighboring base station that also supports the wireless network. Today, it is common for a user device to determine that a handover needs to occur based on a quality of a downlink signal associated with downlink communications. However, as highlighted above, determining a handover based the quality of a downlink signal, without accounting for the quality of an uplink signal, may compromise efficient and effective use of resources in the wireless network as a whole.